14 DAY TRIAL // 1.Have you ever wondered which is the largest fruit in the wild? It grows in the Seychelles Archipelago (in the Indian Ocean) and is produced by a 34 m (113 ft) tall palm tree called sea coconut tree (Lodoicea maldivica), encountered only on two islets: Praslin and Curieuse. The nut has a diameter of 50 cm (1.6 ft) and weighs up to 30 kg (67 pounds), being the heaviest natural fruit.
Centuries ago, Portuguese and Spanish navigators shipping towards India, encountered in the Indian Ocean some gigantic fruits floating over the waves like green buoys. In the past, people paid a heavy price for these "sea coconuts" as they believed they had miraculous powers. The first sailors seeing the nut floating in the sea associated it to a woman's buttocks. The 16th century Europe nobles used these giant nut shells as collectibles.
From this nut, you can make a pot of 5-6 liters. This nut harbors 1-4 seeds. A sea coconut seed represents the largest seed in the world: up to 6 kg (13 pounds). When the nut is ripping, the milk inside turns into a white flesh rich in sugar and fats. The huge seed requires up to 7 years to mature and two to germinate. The tube connecting the germinating sea coconut tree to the seed can be up to 10 m (33 ft) long! Only rotted nuts float on the sea, up to 4,000 km (2,500 mi) away from Seychelles. The coconut trees have separated sexes, thus only the female trees produce the huge nuts.
2.But the world's largest fruits belong to another species. They are produced by a woody vine, called Entada gigas, that can grow over 30 m (100 ft) long and in Costa Rica is called "the monkeys' staircase", as monkeys use it to pass from tree to tree.
They grow 2 m (6.6 ft) long pods! This is the longest fruit in the world. Inside the pod, the seeds have 6 cm (2.2 in) in diameter. The pod turns woody when ripe, and its segments split, floating separately on the rivers, and if they do not get stuck on the banks, where they germinate, they can be drained by the rivers into the Atlantic (more specifically, the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean) and because they can float (each seed compartment possesses an air chamber), they can be drifted in several months by the Gulf Stream to the US and European shores of the Atlantic, up to Scandinavia and UK, where they are called "sea hearts".
In temperate shores, the seeds cannot germinate, but people collect them to make reliquaries and to adorn boxes. In England, mothers give these seeds to their toddlers during the teeth eruption to chew them. Sailors used them as protective talismans. Scientists believe that once the pods were eaten by extinct elephant-sized giant sloths, just like the avocado.
3.Man's selection and fertilizers (like nitrogen, potassium and phosphate) can create really giant fruits. There are pumpkins that could make a nice Halloween 'lamp' for an elephant. The largest fruit ever was an Atlantic Giant pumpkin, which weighed 760 kg (1,689-pound), obtained by a Rhode Island farmer.
4.We like fruits because they are usually sweet. The sweet taste is usually given by the carbohydrates (sugars). So, which is the sweetest fruit? Paradoxically, the sweetest taste is not given by sugars, as taste sensors can be tricked. The miracle fruits, which are the small red berries of Richardella dulcifica (Synsepalum dulcificum), an indigenous shrub from tropical West Africa, have long been known for their taste and their quality of improving acidic foods.
These berries can modify the taste of sour foods and dilute mineral and organic acids into a sweet taste after the fruit pulp has been chewed. This modifying effect lasts for some time, usually for 1-2 h. This is due to a glycoprotein named miraculin, made of 191 amino acids and some sugar chains. Miraculin itself is tasteless, but the human tongue, once exposed to miraculin, perceives ordinarily sour foods, such as citrus, as sweet for up to an hour afterwards.
One thousandth part of a gram of miraculin is enough for making you eat a lemon like a sweet apple. The miraculin molecule can change the structure of taste sensors on the tongue for sweet, becoming activated by acids, which are sour in general. Miraculin might be used as a sugar-free sweetener, without bringing the side effects of the artificial ones, supposed to be carcinogenic.
From the aril of the katemfe fruit (or Sudan miracle fruit) (Thaumatococcus daniellii), also found in West Africa, thaumatin is extracted, a low-calorie (virtually calorie-free) protein sweetener and flavor modifier. The substance is often used for its flavor, not exclusively as a sweetener. The thaumatins were first found as a mixture of proteins, but some of them are about 2000 times sweeter than sugar! But thaumatin's taste is very different from that of sugar: its sweetness is felt very slowly and for a long time and it leaves a liquorice-like aftertaste at high usage levels.
Thaumatin is highly water-soluble and stable to heating under acidic conditions and its synthesis is induced in katemfe in response to an attack upon the plant by viruses and fungi. Within West Africa, the katemfe fruit is cultivated for some time, and thaumatin has been approved as sweetener in European Union (E957), Israel, Japan and US.
Another proteic sweetener was found in the serendipity berry, the drupe of the shrub Dioscoreophyllum cumminsii, also from West Africa. Its protein, called monellin, is 3000 to 5000 times sweeter than sugar; some say 70,000 (this means one monellin molecule: 5000 sugar molecules). Instead, monellin is sensitive to high temperatures.
5.But which is the most acid fruit? The acidity is measured by the pH value: less than 7 means acid. Of course, citrus fruits are the most acid eatable fruits. This is how their acidity varies (and the top of the most acid fruits): lime (pH 2.2-2.4), lemon (pH 2.2-2.6), pomelo (pH 2.9-3.4) and orange (pH 3-4).
6. Which is the most foul-smelling fruit in in world? If linden trees produce one of the most suave and persistent tree-spread scents, one of its relatives is the skunk of the fruits' world: the durian fruit, the product of the trees of the genus Durio. In Southeast Asia it is named the "King of Fruits," even if airlines, subways, hotels and public transportation in those countries do not allow customers to enter them with durian in their possession. Still, the very best durians are, per kilogram, the most expensive of all fruits during a normal harvest year.
It has been consumed in Southeastern Asia for millenia, but Europeans first heard about it 600 years ago. The fruit is unique due not only to its odor, but also to its large size (30 centimetres (12 in) long and 15 centimetres (6 in) in diameter (the size of a football), weighing 1-3 kg (2 to 7 lb)) and a formidable thorn-covered husk (in Malay durian means "thorny fruit").
Amongst the 30 Durio species, Durio zibethinus (a clear reference to the similarity between the stench and the scent emitted by the civet cats), original from Borneo, is the only species available internationally traded. The fruit can be from oblong to round, the husk color green to brown and its flesh pale-yellow to red, depending on the species. The hard outer husk is covered with sharp, prickly thorns, while the edible custard-like flesh within emits the strong odor, which can be perceived either as a fragrance or overpowering and offensive. For a westerner, the penetrating odor of durian can resemble cheeses like limburger.
"...its odor is best described as pig-s**t, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away", said travel and food writer Richard Sterling. Others compare the smell with civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray, and used surgical swabs. The smell can really vary depending on both the Durio species and the degree of ripeness. In Malaysia and Singapore, durian is preferred quite ripe (thus more ill-scented) as the flesh turns richly creamy, slightly alcoholic, and the flavor very complex.
Chemical analyses found in the stench esters, ketones and many thiols (organosulfur chemicals found also in feces, skunk scent, cheese or stale beer. The strong smell is aimed to be detected from far away (0.5 miles or 800 m) by animals, luring them into consuming the fruit, thus ingest the seeds and spread the plant. Many animals indulge in durian, from squirrels to mouse deer, pigs, orangutan, elephants, and even tigers (!). The taste of the flesh has been described as nutty and sweet. The flesh is like a thick, rich, mildly sweet custard or soft brie-like cheese.
"A rich custard highly flavored with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavor that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy", said biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, one of the first Europeans to taste the fruit in the XIXth century.
Durian is rich in sugar, fats, vitamin C, potassium, and the serotoninergic amino acid tryptophan. In Java, this stenchy fruit is even given aphrodisiac qualities. Numerous cultivars of durian have arisen in southeastern Asia over the centuries, each with a distinct taste and odor. Some develop the odor about three days after the fruit is picked, allowing an odorless transport to the consumers who prefer the pungent odor.
Durian is cultivated in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka, Caribbean islands, Florida, Hawaii, Papua New Guinea, Polynesian Islands, Madagascar, southern China, northern Australia. In US and EU durian is sold frozen mainly on Asian markets.
Durian is used for many sweets like candy, ice creams, dodol, rose biscuits, milkshakes, mooncakes, cappuccino or mixed with coconut milk. But this fruit can also be used in dishes fried with onions and chilli or in soups made from fresh water fish. Tempoyak is fermented durian, eaten either cooked or uncooked. The durian seeds, about the size of chestnuts, can be eaten boiled, roasted or fried in coconut oil, with a texture similar to taro or yam, but stickier. Uncooked, the seeds are toxic due to cyclopropene fatty acids.
7.Which is the most cultivated fruit in the world? With the huge popularity of the soups, tomato juice and sauce, ketchup, vegetable salads and pizza, the annual tomato production equals the harvest of apples, bananas, grapes and oranges together.